Start Strong Innovations — A Photo Gallery

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Eleven Start Strong community projects have been up and running now for nearly two years. At a May 3-4 meeting in Atlanta, members got to share with each other the most innovative and effective programs they’ve come up with to help middle school students learn about healthy relationships and how to avoid potentially violent ones. We wrote about that meeting and the Start Strong national initiative on May 6.  

But here’s a look at six innovative programs, all developed at the local level, that we found particularly interesting.  

Keep It Strong song and dance

“Middle school teens love interaction, as well as entertainment, but they also value learning from older teens,” writes Jacqueline Davis of Start Strong Atlanta.

Summer Program Teaches Teens Skills in Media

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Creative Atlanta-area teens will get a unique opportunity to learn about writing, interactive media and storytelling from experienced instructors through VOX Media Café, a summer program hosted by VOX Teen Communications, which publishes the only Atlanta newspaper created by teens for teens. Teens may sign up for any number of four, one-week courses at the VOX newsroom in Peachtree Center in downtown Atlanta.  Instructors such as Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey and Atlanta magazine editor Rebecca Burns will teach courses focusing on creative nonfiction, photojournalism, videography and multimedia storytelling. Classes, which cost $350, are limited to 12 students each week but kids can enroll for more than one week.  Turner Broadcasting is offering financial aid.  Deadline for applications (available here) is May 15.  

Grant Offers Juvenile Court Drug Training Program

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The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, The U.S. Department of Justice, and the Office of Justice Programs offers the 2011 Best Practices for Juvenile Courts Training Grant. The objective is for  juvenile drug courts to better serve kids who are involved in substance abuse, co-occurring substance abuse, and mental health trauma. This will be accomplished by using the Sixteen Strategies of Effective Juvenile Drug Courts as a framework to help build competency, performance and the capacity of the juvenile drug courts nationwide.  The Deadline for this is June 6, 2011 @ 11: 59 EST.

Thomas L. Williams on the Responsibility of Parents

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Giaus Julius Ceasar Agustus, the second emperor of Rome first recognized the role of a parent in shaping a child’s life in the Dio Cassius: “Is it not a joy to acknowledge a child who possesses the qualities of both parents, to tend and educate a being who is both the physical and spiritual image of yourself, so that, as it grows up, another self is created?" But what burden must a parent bear when he or she does not tend to a child and the child becomes delinquent? Currently, there is none. Minor adjustments to the Georgia laws concerning juvenile delinquency would allow the courts to help educate both the child AND parent or guardian so the child may have the proper tools to become a healthy and productive adult.

The juvenile justice system is based on the principle that a child has not yet reached legal capacity. Thus, children cannot be considered solely and fully responsible for their actions and are subject to more lenient punishment than an adult for the same conduct.

Tormentors Sentenced in Cyber-bullying Case

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The legal fall out from one of the nation’s most sensational cyber-bulling incidents drew closer to a close Thursday when three of Phoebe Prince’s tormentors were placed on probation, while the statutory rape charge against another was dropped. Fifteen-year-old Phoebe Prince, who had recently moved from Ireland to South Hadley, Mass., was tormented by six other youths — including two of whom she’d dated — before she hanged herself last year. Yesterday, three of the girls involved in the case were placed on probation for misdemeanor charges of harassment or violating civil rights. “If they satisfy their probation, the charges will be dismissed and they will not have criminal records,” the New York Times reports. The statutory rape charge against a sixth former student, who had sex with Phoebe when he was 18, was dropped.

May 06, 2011

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Read up:

Governor Deal (GA) signs Human Trafficking bill into law:
http://bit.ly/k5dzBP

OJJDP census of kids on probation:
http://bit.ly/kidsonprobi

CDC teen pregnancy stats 1991-2009 [infographic]:
http://bit.ly/preginfo

Justice Department report sheds light on human trafficking stats:
http://bit.ly/traffstats

Youth Justice Barbecue celebrates year of progress:
http://bit.ly/voxbbq

Host: Ryan Schill
Video: Clay Duda

Judge Steven Teske on Mother’s Day and Mom’s Tough Love

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Parental involvement in the life of a child buffers kids from delinquency.  But involvement is something more than supervision ---  it’s about being functional --- telling your kids what they need to hear no matter the pain to them and to you.  My mother was one of those pain-giving parents. One of those maternal tormenting moments occurred in 1968. I was eight and squatting behind a car with two friends.  They were brothers and older than me.  We had something in common --- we didn’t get along with Randy.  Randy and his friends were on the other side of the street. They were throwing rocks at us. The brothers and I took refuge behind a car hoping they wouldn’t throw anything.

Start Strong Shares Ideas to Stop Dating Violence Before it Starts

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Sometimes the solution to a very big problem is to prevent it from occurring in the first place. That’s the theory behind Start Strong, a national program designed to defeat teen-dating violence by helping middle-school kids learn how to avoid unhealthy relationships. “I didn’t even know I was in an abusive relationship,” says Nija Nelson, who says her former boyfriend yelled at her and called her names. “Most teens don’t recognize the other kinds of abuse besides physical abuse. Start Strong helped me realize that the relationship I was in was unhealthy.”

Now, Nija is an Atlanta high school senior and a Start Strong “Youth Leader” who talks to middle school kids about teen-dating violence.

Mentoring Program Grant

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The MetLife Foundation grant continues its tradition of community involvement through its After-School and Mentoring Grant. This is to help increase opportunities for kids through after-school programs and mentoring kids through organizations that help enrich out-of-school activities for low-income middle school kids.  

Benjamin Chambers on Some Surprising Findings About Youth Attitudes Toward Crime

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Do delinquent teens see criminal activity as something positive? Many adults assume that they do. However, research by Rachel Swaner and Elise White, published in 2010 by the Center for Court Innovation, suggests that for some youth at least, their attitudes and values are not anti-social at all. Though the youth outcomes in their study were not terribly positive, it underscores the need to provide youth with opportunities to do positive activities that reinforce their positive values. The study, titled, "Drifting Between Worlds: Delinquency and Positive Engagement among Red Hook Youth,"  involved a small sample of 44 youth in a housing project in Red Hook, Brooklyn.